By Voltaire
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Voltaire (Francois Marie Arouet
l.j.): One of the greatest writers in
history--holds a place in French
literature and history roughly
comparable to the place that
Shakespeare holds in English
literature.
Wrote about 75 plays
Wrote several works of epic and
satirical poetry--Most famous
poem, L'henriade (A French
national epic about Henry IV of
France)
Wrote voluminous works of history
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The Century of Louis XIV
Articles for the French
Encyclopedie
Wrote scientific works
Wrote a great deal of literary
criticism
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Dr. Ralph—”Doctor” who died at
Minden in 1759
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Voltaire denied authorship to protect
himself from punishment.
Pseudonym is obviously false = causes
a sense of playfulness.
 Voltaire
wrote in many genres, including a
genre called the “Philosophical Tale”—this is
best represented by Candide
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A very specialized genre quite popular in the 18th
century
Should not be read realistically--the purpose is
not to present a believable version of life, as in a
novel.
These works are works of satire--they are
intended to use humor to criticize some
philosophical position.
A
philosophical tale tests a certain
proposition
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Gulliver's Travels Book IV tested the proposition
that humans were "rational animals."
Candide is designed to test the proposition that
this is the best of all possible worlds.
This is known as the philosophy of "Optimism"
It was formalized in the eighteenth century by
Gottfreid Wilhelm von Leibnitz and popularized
by Alexander Pope
 German
mathematician
 Co-inventor of
calculus
 Philosopher and
theologian
 Developer of the
philosophical theory
of “optimism”
 Applied
mathematical
formulas to
theological issues
1) If God is all powerful
2) And God is moral
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 Then
everything that happens in the world
must be the best thing that could possibly
happen
We are part of a system and cannot see the
whole picture.
 What we see as bad is actually good and
necessary.
 We are a part of nature, not the singular end of
creation.
 It is only our pride that causes us to see our
immediate suffering as a bad thing.
 Whatever IS is right.
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 Greatest
English
Neoclassical poet.
 Translator of The
Iliad and The
Odyssey
 Master of the
closed heroic
couplet
 English populizer
of Leibnitz’s
theory of optimism
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Candide
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Our naïve protagonist
Cunegonde
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Candide’s love
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Baron of Thunder-tentronchkh
“powerful” lord in Westphalia
(Germany)
 Kicks out Candide for kissing
Cunegonde
James (Jacques) the
Anabaptist
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Baron Jr.
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The Grand Inquisitor
(aka Jesuit Baron of
Thunder-ten-tronchkh)
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Jesuit Reverend Father /
Commander in Paraguay
Candide “kills” him
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Dr. Pangloss
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“All Tounge” = proponent of
optimism
“Hanged” by the Inquisition
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Protestant who opposed infant
baptism
Provides charity to Candide in
Holland.
Pays for Pangloss’s “cure” from
syphilis
Takes Candide and Pangloss to
Lisbon on business
Auto-da-fe = literally “act of
faith” in Portuguese—ceremony
in which heretics are burned
Noticed Cunegonde at mass—
shares her with Don Issachar
Don Issachar
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Jewish man who bought
Cunegonde from the handsome
Bulgar captain.
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Old Woman
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Daughter of Pope Urban and
Princess Palestrina
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Voltaire’s omitted footnote:
“Observe the author’s extreme
discretion! Until now there has
never been any pope named
Urban X. He stops short of
attributing a bastard to a known
pope. Oh, what circumspection!
Oh, what delicacy of conscience!”
Age 14 = beauty, pirates, slavery,
death of mother, eunuch in
Morocco, slavery again, plague,
Turkish general, loss of a buttock,
Russian noble (Boyar), barmaid,
servant to Don Issachar
Governor of Buenos Aires
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Cacambo
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Candide’s valet
“street smart” and acts as a foil
to Candide
Monsieur Vanderdendur
Trials & tribulations
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Tortured his slave—took his left
leg and right hand
Swindles Candide, steals his last
two sheep, but meets a suitable
end when his ship is attacked by
pirates.
Martin
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Cunegonde marries him to avoid
persecution (regarding the
murder of the Grand Inquisitor)
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Poor scholar who Candide pays
to travel with him
Manichean = a belief that two
principles, one good, the other
evil, contended as equals for
mastery of the universe.
Catholic church denied that a
powerful, evil force necessarily
kept goodness in check.
Knows El Dorado
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Marquis de Parolignac
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Abbe
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A member of the clergy from the region of Perigord in
southwestern France
Shows Candide Paris
Writes “letters” from Cunegonde and turns Candide over
to the police
Paquette
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Plays cards with Candide
Love tryst
Pangloss’s “maid” from Ch. 1
With Brother Giroflee in Venice
Candide’s experiment about the power of money
Lord Pocucurante
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Venician nobleman; supposed to be happy
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Drift from Cayenne…river goes under a “vault of terrifying
rocks that soared into the sky.”
Original homeland of the Incas
 Set up as a constitutional monarchy – the king governs with the
approval of the people
 Religion = belief in one god, no prayer as it is not needed (have
everything!)
 No law = not needed.
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Gold and jewels are worthless = dirt.
Food = parrots, condors, monkeys, hummingbirds, etc.
Cacambo in the lead
Vow not to leave El Dorado vs. Candide’s/Cacambo’s
decision to leave – “to be happy no longer”
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Pay off the Governor of Buenos Aires
Location: landed on the shore of the Propontis
and came to the house of a Transylvanian Prince
(Turkey)
 Candide’s marriage to Cunegonde
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Spite
Cunegonde’s beauty
Members on the Farm: Candide, Cunegonde, Old
Woman, Martin, Pangloss, Cacambo, and
eventually Paquette and Brother Giroflee.
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What happened to the Baron Jr.?
Turk’s advice: Power of work
 “That is well said, but we must cultivate our
garden.”
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A close reading of
Chapter One establishes
most of the major
themes that will recur
in the book.
Candide lives in a
“perfect” world, which
he will always try to
recapture.
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At the end of Book One,
he is kicked out of
Paradise (kind of a
metaphor for humanity’s
“fall” from Eden).
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Candide will always
remember this world as
an ideal time, and
Cunegonde as the ideal
woman.
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He will live his life trying
to recapture this ideal
world rather than trying
to find an attainable
happiness.
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This is a satire on the
general human tendency
to always believe that
there was a “Golden Age”
that individuals and
societies are fallen from.
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The attack on Optimism
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The stand in for Leibnitz in this
satire is Dr. Pangloss (Dr. All
Tongue)
Ch. 5
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Pangloss’s philosophy in Ch.
1
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“It has been proven, that things
cannot be other than what they
are, for since everything is
made for an end, everything is
necessarily for the best end.
Glasses, legs, stones, & pigs
Ch. 4
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Syphilis is "good" because it gave
us chocolate and cochineal
(scarlet dye)
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The belief that all happens for
the good prevents Candide from
rescuing James, the Anabaptist.
Earthquake in Lisbon = Candide
is dying and Pangloss wants to
prove his point rather than help
him.
“This earthquake is not a unique
phenomenon…same causes,
same effects”
The rebuttal to Pangloss is
the entire novel of Candide
The narrative progresses from one disaster to
another
 Almost all of the events that Voltaire chronicles
(earthquakes, wars, auto's da fe, etc.) were
historical occurrences.
 These events, Voltaire believes, are a rebuttal to
the philosophy of optimism. (And not an entirely
fair one either; the philosophy can certainly
accommodate them.)
 There IS a divine providence at work in Candide.
Things happen that are completely impossible,
but this providence almost always seems to work
AGAINST people, as if God were going out of his
way to make Candide miserable (rather than
happy.)
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Bulgars =Prussians/
French troops of
Frederick the Great.
 Oreillons = “big ears”
tribe of Indians in
Peru who pierced and
distended their ears.
 Monarchy
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Six kings with Cacambo
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Countries
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France
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England
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Troops
Candide & Martin’s trip to
Paris
Death of Admiral John
Byng
Religion
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Monks and sex
Jews = anti-Semitic
Catholicism
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“Let’s eat a Jesuit!”
Billet de confession (aka
indulgence)
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Voltaire was a "deist"--he was not an
atheist, but he believed that God was an
organizer, or a clockmaker, and that,
after organizing the world and creating
certain natural laws, he allowed it to run
by itself.
Deism is derived entirely from reason-God is not experienced through
revelation or sacred text; he is deduced
from reason and from the evidence of
the natural world.
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This was a very popular religious position
among Enlightenment thinkers--Thomas
Jefferson was also a deist.
It is very consistent with Enlightenment
ideals: the search for foundational
principles in morality, law, politics, art,
music, and literature (to name only a few).
Voltaire spent much of his life crusading
against what he called l'infâme (the
infamy), which, for him, meant a kind of
hostile religious fanaticism and
intolerance.
Voltaire himself was exiled from both
Catholic France and Calvinist Geneva
He managed to make enemies on both
sides of a major issue--a real
accomplishment for a satirist.
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Some examples of this kind of
intolerance in Candide
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In the city of El Dorado, there are no
monks or priests
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is the Pope Antichrist? (attack on
Protestantism)
the auto da fe (attack on Catholicism)
Voltaire is working positively to show how
well society can be run without religious
discourse.
Many of the sympathetic characters in
Candide are from organizations on the
fringes of organized religion
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The Anabaptists (Jacques the Anabaptist)
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A German sect of adult baptizers
Tended towards socialism
Everyone hated them.
Manichees (Martin)
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Believed that good and evil were equally
matched and equally important.
An official Catholic "heresy"--you could get
burned for it.
 Eden
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/ Paradise
Westphalia
The garden
 El
Dorado
 Others?
 What
is this novel
saying about…?
War
 Wealth
 Civilized society
 Organized religion
 Aristocracy and
class levels
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